Security study: You will be owned

"C-level executives might finally be committing to making security a real priority, but all this talk of risk management is just a thinly veiled admission that people understand that they're totally defenseless, despite spending millions," said Vincent Weeper, chief research scientist at anti-malware specialist Cement-Tech. "Hopefully, we can keep the wool pulled over their eyes in terms of selling them more products, but let's face it, this ship actually sailed about five years ago."

Despite the promise of newer security technologies including DLP (data leakage prevention) and NAC (network access control) tools, it would seem that businesses are only fooling themselves into thinking that crafty hackers haven't already figured out ways to bypass any system aimed at stopping their attacks, according to the report.

Some industry watchers maintain that such products that have previously been tabbed as representing the best hopes for improving corporate security are actually just ideas cooked up by venture capitalists to give them an excuse to brag to their Silicon Valley colleagues how smart and cool they are because they're remotely involved in a game of "electronic cops and robbers."

"Basically, if you're looking for leakage prevention, you'd be better off strapping a carton of Depends diapers to your servers," said Jake Andrith, an analyst at Opportunist Research. "NAC has been on the market for two years and nobody even understands what it is supposed to do, let alone how to use it -- not that it works, anyway."

Looking into the future, experts predict that companies will continue to buy products, create internal initiatives, and pretend to welcome security-oriented compliance mandates even as hackers from all over the world simultaneously rob them of their most valuable customer data and intellectual property.

The problem is that hackers are simply more intelligent and better motivated than their peers in the security industry, not including the majority of self-proclaimed white hat hackers who also sell vulnerability and exploit data to criminals to pad their incomes, said Cathy Mooseiris, security forensics researcher at MicroSieve.

"It's pretty much a given that most of the top people in the industry are playing both sides of the fence, because the truth is at the end of the day, they care more about making money than protecting some business concern they don't work for," Mooseiris said. "If I was a chief security officer, I'd be looking for a job that wasn't so completely impossible."

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